Pro-Palestinian activists assail Polish film fest over sponsor’s Israel investments
Even as anti-Israel groups call for a boycott due to sponsorship by BNP Paribas, Wrocław festival condemns ‘genocide’ in Gaza
A popular film festival in the Polish city of Wrocław is being targeted by anti-Israel activists for receiving sponsorship from a bank that has invested in Israel’s arms industry.
The action came despite the fact that organizers of the festival, which receives funding from public institutions, such as Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, have condemned Israel’s military action against Hamas in Gaza as a “genocide,” and will screen a film that Israeli film houses have deemed too sensitive to touch.
Wrocław, a city of more than 670,000 in western Poland of whom some 350 are Jews, is also home to one of the most important Jewish studies program in Poland at the University of Wrocław.
Local activists are outraged that the New Horizons Film Festival, one of Poland’s biggest and most popular film festivals, is sponsored by French banking giant BNP Paribas, according to a report by digital music news site CDM Link.
The activists charge that BNP Paribas’s investments in Israel make it unsuitable to serve as the lead partner in the festival, which presents mainly arthouse cinema.
BNP Paribas is the largest European finance provider to companies that sell weapons to Israel, having provided 5.7 billion euros in loans and underwritings since 2021, according to a 2024 report by a group of 19 civil society organizations and trade unions.
The bank traded two million shares in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest privately owned defense firm, during the first quarter of 2025, according to documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The group of activists called on the festival to publicly address its relationship with BNP Paribas and assess whether its partnership “is compatible with the festival’s stated values,” CDM Link’s report said.
The festival’s reply was long and convoluted.
“Let us begin with something obvious — yet essential — that must be stated clearly at the outset: As organizers of the festival, we firmly condemn the genocide committed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip and all crimes against humanity,” a letter on the festival website said.
The letter rambles, and continues with a meditation on how ethical consumption is impossible in a world of complex networks. It concludes with a statement by BNP Paribas denying any involvement in the conflict.
According to CDM Link, the activists responded that the festival did not address their complaints, and called for a boycott.
The film festival is set to screen Nadav Lapid’s inflammatory film “Yes,” about a musician asked to rewrite Israel’s national anthem.
“Including [this] film in the program was not an easy decision,” the festival’s page for the movie says. “Should we give voice to an Israeli in the face of genocide in Gaza, even if he is an emigrant and a filmmaker remaining in radical opposition to Israeli nationalism? Ultimately, we answered this question: yes.”
“Yes” follows a musician named Y, who is commissioned by the authorities to rewrite “Hatikvah” (The Hope), Israel’s national anthem, into a propaganda piece calling for the eradication of Palestinians. Lapid has said the movie is a response to his country’s “blindness” to suffering in Gaza.
Lapid has previously dissected his country’s ills in “Synonyms,” which won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2019, and “Ahed’s Knee” (2021), shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021.
The New Horizons Film Festival is funded by public institutions such as the municipality of Wrocław, the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, the Culture Promotion Fund, the Polish Film Institute, and the Swiss-Polish Cooperation Program.
The Times of Israel Community.